Crystal Universe - [Crystal Singer 03] - Crystal Line Page 10

  “Lanzecki’s new partner,” Lars muttered, and responded. “Yes, Bollam?”

  “It’s Lanzecki, I can’t get him to stop!”

  “Take the crystal out of his hand,” Killashandra said angrily. It irritated her that she still couldn’t place this Bollam fellow.

  “He’s not holding crystal. He’s cutting and he won’t stop. He won’t listen. He’s—he’s thralled!”

  “You dork, of course he is, that’s why he doesn’t cut often. It’s your job to stop him. That’s why he takes a partner into the Ranges,” Lars replied, his tone still reasonable.

  “But I’ve tried, I’ve tried everything. He’s bigger than I am!” Bollam’s voice had turned to a distressed whine.

  “Knock his feet out from under him,” Lars said, concern deepening in his expression.

  “I tried that, too.”

  “Cross-cut with your cutter. Tune it off-pitch, queer his note,” Killa roared, becoming more incensed with this dork’s stupidity. Where had Lanzecki found such an ineffectual partner?

  “I can’t. I don’t know how to cross-cut. This is my first time in the Ranges. He was shepherding me!” Now there was grievance and indignation in Bollam’s voice. That particular tone triggered the appropriate memory in Killashandra’s mind: it was exactly how Bollam had sounded when he couldn’t find the Apharian files.

  “So this is why Bollam suited him,” Killashandra said, bitter with the realization of exactly what Lanzecki was doing.

  Lars stared at her, jerking her arm to pull her around to face him. “Turn the sled. We’ve got to try.”

  “No.” She reset her hands on the yoke, gritting her teeth against the pain that suddenly scored her and the tears that threatened to blind her. “No, we can’t! Rules and Regs! Mayday means nothing on Ballybran!”

  “Nothing?” Lars roared at her. “Lanzecki’s been our friend, your lover! How can you abandon him?”

  “I’m not abandoning him,” Killashandra shrieked back, glaring her anger, her hurt, the pain of knowing what Lanzecki wanted! “Get out of there, Bollam,” she bellowed at the comunit. “Save your own skin. You can’t save his.”

  “But I can’t just leave!” Bollam sounded shocked, horrified at this heartless advice. “He’s the Guild Master. It’s my duty …”

  “There is no such duty in the Rules and Regs, Bollam. There never was and there never will be. Get out of there, Bollam, while you still can. Leave Lanzecki.”

  “I don’t believe I’m hearing you say this,” Lars cried.

  She swiveled around at him, tears streaming down her face, her throat closing so that she was momentarily deprived of speech.

  “He wants it this way,” she managed to choke out. Then she swallowed hard on her grief and glared straight into Lars’s appalled face. “Consider, Lars, would there be any other logical reason why Lanzecki would team up with a dork like Bollam? A novice in the Ranges? Physically too weak to knock him out of thrall? We haven’t the right to interfere. We owe Lanzecki his choice.”

  She hooked her elbows through the yoke so that Lars would have to break her arms to get control of the sled. But he didn’t try. He sat staring at her as she sent the sled roaring out of the Range, using every ounce of thrust in its powerful new engines.

  “Lanzecki intended to opt out?”

  “Singers have that option, Lars,” she said in a voice as low as his. Her throat thickened again, her eyes stinging with tears. It was a hard reality to accept, but she didn’t doubt for a moment—now—that that had been Lanzecki’s intention. She could even hear his deep voice replying to her puzzled query about Bollam: that the man had his uses. She ought to have known what Lanzecki was about and tried to—tried to what? Talk a tired man out of ending a life that had grown too tedious with responsibility, too tiresome with problems, too lonely with his longtime partner dead? “He’s been Guild Master for centuries.”

  Lars was silent until, behind them, they could both hear storm wail creeping inexorably nearer.

  “Then is that also why he was so intent on me understanding Guild politics?” Lars asked, softly, shakily.

  “What do you mean by that?” she demanded.

  “I’m not sure I know,” Lars replied, raising his hands in doubt. “It was just that—well, Lanzecki knew you and—whenever we were in from the Ranges, he sought out our company, but I always thought it was you …” His voice trailed off.

  “Don’t get any ideas, Lars Dahl,” she said coldly, harshly. “You may be a Milekey Transition …”

  “So are you.”

  “But there’s no way I’d be Guild Master.” She glared at him, willing him to respond in the same vein. “Damn it, Lars, you’re my partner. And there’s a lot more to being Guild Master than understanding the politics of the job.”

  “That is true enough,” he replied in a muted voice, his eyes looking directly ahead as they passed over the last hills before the Cube.

  The flight officer signaled them to park their sled near Sorting with the other half-dozen vehicles that had fled the storm. Killashandra killed the engines and turned to Lars.

  “Start with the crates, will you? I’ll report,” she said bleakly.

  “I will, if you want me to,” Lars offered, suddenly human again in his unexpressed sympathy.

  “No, I was pilot.”

  The flight officer, a lanky lean man whom Killashandra didn’t recognize at all, was trotting in her direction, signaling her to wait for him.

  “Were you within range of Bollam? The one Lanzecki was shepherding?”

  “Yes,” Killashandra said so flatly that the man blinked in surprise. “He couldn’t break Lanzecki out of thrall. We told him to get the hell out of the Ranges.”

  “You mean …”

  The cargo officer arrived at that point, her face grim.

  “I mean Lanzecki chose!” Killashandra dared the flight officer to argue her point.

  “You’re sure, Killa?” the cargo officer asked.

  Killashandra rounded on her, away from the accusing eyes of the flight officer.

  “Why else would he choose a dork like Bollam? And a novice? Too inexperienced to know how to break thrall and too physically insignificant to be a threat!”

  The cargo officer bowed her head, her eyes closed.

  “I don’t understand … Were you near enough, Killashandra Ree, to reach them in time?” the flight officer demanded.

  “I accepted Lanzecki’s choice. You’d better.”

  With that Killashandra turned on her heel, returning to her sled at a pace that was nearly a run. Behind her she could hear the flight officer arguing with Cargo, whose low and curt rejoinders told Killashandra that she, at least, accepted Lanzecki’s option.

  As she helped her silent partner unload their cut, she knew that Lars’s feelings about that option were ambivalent. The news seemed to seep through from the Hangar into Sorting, and conversations were muted, arguments over crystal prices conducted in low tones. When the Sorter told them how much they had earned for the green, Killashandra felt none of the elation such a figure should have elicited. Lars only arched his eyebrows, nodded acknowledgment, and turned away. The Sorter shrugged. Dully, Killashandra followed Lars to the lifts. She did listen to the Met report that was being broadcast, even in the lifts, since weather had top priority with most singers. Nothing was said about missing sleds. Nothing ever was.

  “That’s a relief,” Killashandra muttered as the report concluded. The storm had been one of those quick squalls, fierce in its brief life, its only damage that of taking Lanzecki’s life in its fury. “We can be back out in the Ranges by tomorrow evening.”

  “Fardles, Killa!” Lars rounded on her. “Lanzecki’s not even found and—”

  Her livid expression stopped his words. “The sooner I’m in the Ranges, the sooner I’ll forget.”

  “Forget Lanzecki?” Lars was stunned.

  “Forget! Forget!” The lift door opened and she ran down the hall to their apartment.
She heard him following her and wasn’t even grateful.

  As she slammed into their quarters, she could hear the radiant fluid slopping into the tub. Pulling off her coverall and boots, she stumbled into the room and clambered into the bath. The fluid was no more than calf-deep, so she stood under the spigot and let it roll down her back and shoulders. Dimly she heard Lars’s voice, updating his records. She began to curse, so that she couldn’t possibly hear a word he said.

  All the resident staff of the Cube were quiet and depressed the next noon when Killashandra and Lars reached the dining room. While Killa filled her tray from the alcohol-drinks dispenser, Lars kept looking around, peering at the faces of those sitting in alcoves. Seeing his discreet search for Bollam recharged Killa’s vexation.

  “Lanzecki opted out, Lars,” she said in an intense low voice, jerking him to her side. “What’re you drinking?”

  “Yarran!” His voice was flat.

  “Yarran? This is no time for beer! This is the time to get paralytic drunk!”

  He gave her a bitterly amused look. “I thought you wanted to be back in the Ranges tomorrow morning. With a hangover?”

  “With the most massive hangover I can acquire between now and then,” she told him savagely, and downed the first of the many triple-measure glasses on her tray, pressing for a refill as she tossed the empty glass into the recycler.

  “You may just go out alone, then,” he said. Taking the Yarran beer from the slot, he left her standing there.

  Surprised, she watched him maneuver among the tables, heading for the far alcove where the two Hanger officers were sitting. She hadn’t thought Lars had a masochistic streak in him. Or maybe he just had to find out if Bollam had somehow managed to get Lanzecki into the sled and back to the Cube.

  The dork couldn’t have managed it, or the nonsingers of the Guild wouldn’t be so deep in drink. Now that she had looked around, she could see that most of them were as badly gone as she would like to be. She downed another triple and, moving carefully so as not to slosh a drop of liquid anesthesia, made her way toward Lars. The stench of ketones was almost overpowering. These people must have been drinking steadily since the news got out.

  “Oh, he’ll live,” Cargo was saying as Killashandra approached the table. “That’s not saying how much good he’ll be.” She glanced up at Killashandra and, with a brief inclination of her head, indicated that the singer could join them. The flight officer clearly did not agree with that invitation. “Oh, leave it, Murr. You haven’t been here long enough to know. You did as you should, Killa,” she added and patted the cushion beside her. Her eyebrows lifted at the sight of so much liquor on the tray. She raised her mug of coffee. “Happy hangover!”

  Suddenly Killashandra lost any taste for the boozing she had planned. Her stomach roiled and growled. She sat down, hands limp in her lap, and stared across at Lars, wanting his reassurance and understanding even more than she had ever wanted to cut black crystal. He pointedly ignored her, and the tears began to stream down her face.

  “You did right, Killa. You did,” Cargo said softly, and clasped her fingers on the singer’s forearm, squeezing briefly with a gentling firmness before releasing. “Didn’t she, Lars Dahl?” she added sternly.

  Lars looked at Cargo, unable to avoid his partner’s tear-streaked face. He closed his eyes, exhaling in defeat. “Yes, if you say so, she did.”

  “Look here, Dahl.” Cargo leaned across the table, her face fierce. “I do say so. If you want, you can ask Medical. They could see.” And she waved her hand in the general direction of the infirmary wing where damaged singers were tended until such time as hearts in crippled bodies stopped and empty minds went dark. “I could see!” And her tone was fierce. “Murr here didn’t know Lanzecki in his prime as I did, and Killa did! And Killa knew him better than most. Face it, Murr, Lars, she did the right thing. Don’t know why that ass Bollam even qualified—except he was probably too craven, or too shitless scared to step back after Disclosure, when he heard all the risks he’d be taking on Ballybran. He had a lousy Transition, as if the symbiont working into his bloodstream also discovered it hadn’t made a great choice of a home body, and we never thought he’d end up a singer!” The scorn in her voice gave unexpected ease to Killashandra’s anguish. “Certainly not as Lanzecki’s partner!”

  “Lanzecki was shepherding him …” Lars said, trying to find some perverse justification.

  Cargo snorted bitterly. “When Lanzecki said he’d shepherd the geek, I knew I wouldn’t ever see Lanzecki back in the Hangar, Lars. And I told you that, didn’t I, Murr?”

  “I just don’t understand why,” Murr said. “Everyone’s saying he was the best Guild Master we’ve ever had …”

  “There’ve only been four,” Cargo replied.

  “Four?” Murr was staggered. “But the Guild’s been going close to seven hundred years!”

  “Hmmm, so it has, and I’ve been Cargo for nearly two and a half hundred.”

  That silenced Murr completely—he stared at the woman as if he expected her active body and attractive face to crumple into dust if he so much as blinked. Despite her grief, Killashandra was amused.

  “What did Medical know about Lanzecki?” Lars asked, his expression as bleak as ever. Somehow, though, Killa sensed that his antagonism toward her had eased.

  Cargo shrugged. “What happens to all of us eventually? The symbiont is weakened past restoration, and degeneration finally starts. All a fast downhill ride then.” That was when she noticed Murr’s expression and grinned. “Never fear, Murr, you’re stuck with me a while yet. Me and my symbiont are in great shape.”

  “It doesn’t say in Rules and Regs,” Lars began after watching Murr try to assume a normal attitude, “how a new Guild Master is elected.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” Cargo agreed, frowning slightly. “But, like I say, the problem doesn’t come up very often.”

  Killashandra sent a fierce glare at Lars. The slight grin that tugged at one corner of his mouth did not reassure her.

  “It’ll take time,” Cargo added indifferently. “Politics is involved. What else is new? They have to choose someone acceptable to the majority of the long-term customers.”

  “Who’s ‘they’?” Lars asked.

  “I dunno.” Cargo shrugged again. “Maybe one of the Instructors knows.” She looked around the big room. “None of them appears to be sober enough to ask. I gotta get back to work. Do I put your sled into a ready slot? That storm’s cleared off.”

  Killashandra didn’t dare look at Lars.

  “Yes, we’ll be out again tomorrow,” he said, and she sagged against the cushions with relief. But her relief was very short-lived as she remembered that Cargo had estimated it would be a long time before the new Guild Master was chosen.

  So she didn’t get drunk to blunt her acute sense of loss at Lanzecki’s death. She endured it as Cargo and Lars did, as Murr couldn’t. But she drank glass for glass of Yarran beer with them. A singer could drink Yarran beer for days and barely blunt sensitivities. She heard that Bollam had survived with what wits he originally possessed intact. He had been badly crystal-cut when the rescue ship had found his crashed sled, but he had made it past the storm zone before losing control. What she hated Bollam for was that crystal had wiped all his memories of Lanzecki. She couldn’t wait to get out in the Ranges and hope for the same respite. A few days cutting in the Ranges, and one could forget just about anything.

  Lars was up before her the next morning, their gear all packed, and silently they made their way to the Hangar. Cargo lifted her hand in acknowledgment; Flight Officer Murr raised his only to give them the go-ahead. Some trainee gave them a formal release.

  As if the sled were on some kind of giant spring whose pull could not be resisted, they flew directly back to the black and yellow chevron of the green crystal.

  “We shouldn’t have gone direct,” Killashandra remarked to Lars as he passed over the marker.

  “Sky’s clear,” he s
aid with a diffident shrug. It was. No other singer was aloft to see the direction they took, direct or oblique.

  When they landed in the little canyon, they both knew the vein had been damaged. They spent the rest of the day trying to cut down into clear color.

  “Fardles, it’s gone, Lars, leave it,” Killa said when decades upon decades of experience finally surfaced to remind her how pointless their efforts were. “Green cracks the worst of all when a vein’s been exposed.”

  He kicked at the shards underfoot to relieve his frustration and led the way back to the sled. They stayed there the night, but when crystal song woke desire in them, it was only crystal that spoke, not their hearts.

  It took them a week to search the full circle of which that chevron was the center. They found a very light pink, but it wasn’t worth the effort of turning on their cutters. They had withdrawn from each other as never before, and Killashandra cursed silently, craving to cut crystal and relieve the tension. Even Lars might forget—at least lose the edge of painful memory—if they could just cut.

  Perversely the weather stayed fair, but summer had Ballybran in its thrall and baked the Ranges. As they searched for crystal, they also looked for the deepest, most shadowy canyons in which to spend the night and get some relief from the unmitigated heat.

  “I could almost welcome a storm,” Lars said. “Unless we can find some water, we’re going to have to go back.”

  “No! Not until we find crystal.”

  He shrugged, but they did find water, a deep pool under an overhang where water had oozed out of the more porous rock and been collected in the shade. They filled the tank, then stripped and bathed, washing their clothing where a tiny stream trickled out of the pond. The relief was physical, not mental, but they were more in charity with each other than at any time since Bollam’s voice had shattered their rapport.

  Late the next morning Lars, whose turn it was to pilot the sled, spotted an almost invisible black and yellow chevron.

  “What do you think? We cut here?” he asked.

  “I don’t remember, don’t care, I’d even cut pink, so long’s we cut something!”